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Friday, March 17, 2017

Air Serbia eyes Krasnodar service

The Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation has granted Air Serbia approval to launch up to seven weekly flights between Belgrade and Krasnodar in the country's south. It comes following a permit request filed by the Serbian Civil Aviation Directorate with Russian authorities in January. In its request, the Serbian regulator noted, "Our designated airline, Air Serbia, has expressed its interest in establishing scheduled air services to Krasnodar with seven weekly frequencies". In its response, published yesterday, the Russian Ministry noted, "The Russian side is ready to give the administrative permission to Air Serbia to perform services from points in Serbia to Krasnodar with up to seven frequencies per week on a temporary basis until the next round of consultations between our aeronautical authorities. We hope to develop successful and mutually beneficial cooperation between our authorities".

Air Serbia currently codeshares on Aeroflot's flights between Moscow and Krasnodar, in addition to Kazan, Samara, Sochi and St. Petersburg. Last year, Air Serbia introduced flights to its second destination in Russia - St. Petersburg - which it currently serves three times per week on a seasonal summer basis. Due to the route's relative success, the airline also ran a number of flights during the winter. It carried some 12.000 passengers between the two cities over the year. Furthermore, Air Serbia also maintains services between Belgrade and Moscow. Krasnodar Airport is Russia's ninth busiest. Apart from Russian based airlines, European carriers serving the city include Austrian, Air Moldova and Belavia.

The Serbian carrier has previously announced it will be introducing four weekly flights to Venice this summer. It recently discontinued services to Istanbul and will no longer serve Warsaw, which it suspended at the start of the winter season. Furthermore, summer services to Varna and Kiev are unlikely to be resumed this year either. The 2017 summer season begins next Sunday. EX-YU Aviation News will bring you all the changes the national carriers in the former Yugoslavia will be making to their network's this summer over the coming week.

On the other hand, Krasnodar seems to be quite underserved by western European carriers. No LH, no AF - only OS have a route to Vienna (literally the only western capital with a direct link to Krasnodar). This could make a good niche for JU - a bit of transfer pax to Croatia and Montenegro in summer, a bit of transfer pax to JFK, a bit to Germany, and there you go.

Perhaps the best opportunity lies in the fact there is no TK in Krasnodar.

I could read the first batch of comments with my eyes closed. Doom, doom, doom. When JU opens routes, it is bad. When they cut them it is bad. Everything is bad and can only be bad. Bad, bad, bad. I sometimes wonder how these people make it through a single day with so much hate and bitterness on their souls.

Check 9:05, 9:06 and 9:16. There will be dozens such doom predictions by the end of the day. Nothing but automatic hate, no matter what the news is. Any argument to support it? No need. Hate is enough, as long as they spit it left and right.

And there are some posters who actually took a look at the data and said the decision may not be so "crazy" after all. But why would the hater brigade ever bother to actually discuss anything? For them it is all about shouting doom, doom, doom.

I believe this became a boring tradition in this blog, attacking/criticizing every negative comment on JU. I'm sick of reading notes on how others hate JU, that JU is the greatest and the most successful airline in the entire planet but people in this blog can't acknowledge it etc. Please stop that. If you have a counter opinion, write it so, instead of directing your reaction towards other people and their comments.

I do not have the feasibility analysis in front of me. What I was simply saying that some posters already share a couple of arguments on why/how the route might work. We will of course not know until we see how it goes - but at least we can discuss it as aviation enthusiasts.

And these neverending chants of doom, crazy, wtf is Krasnodar, etc... this is not enthusiasm. Just a daily dose of toxins.

No one today said anything even close to JU being the greatest and most successful airline. What is said is, that the same way JU makes you sick because it exists some other people are sick of reading hate attacks without any argument to back them up and before a route is even launched. Hell, your brethren do not even know where/what Krasnodar is - but they know the route there is crazy.

You expect enthusiasm on a route that makes "not the most sense" ?If your average aviation enthusiast had to compile a list of top 20-30 airports unserved by Air Serbia (within the range and capacity of their current fleet) how many do you think would put Krasnodar on it ?

Who says it does not make sense? How in earth can you know that? Can you offer any argument other than "nonsense"? You may start with those top 20-30 unserved airports and we may compare JU'c chances there compared to Krasnodar. Light up some discussion, contribute with something. 30 comments since 9am and I am still waiting to actually read an ARGUMENT on why Krasnodar would not work. All I can read is "nonsense" without anything behind it.

We all know that haters go into a frenzied overdrive when there's any positive news on JU, BEG or RS. A good analytical correlation can be followed, for example, between Wednesday's, yesterday's and today's news. Which is indicate that there are fanatics on standby, that feed their mental insecurities through their daily barrages directed against one country in particular and all that it has.

I highly recommend everyone to comment on the actual topic, instead of trying to humiliate, make a mockery of or attack the people dared to leave a comment here. And note that the improper posts are filtered by the administration, regardless of your comments.

Who knows what the actual traffic flow is like between Serbia and Russia. Apart from Moscow and LED it could have the most passengers from southern Russia. The fact that they are codesharing with Aeroflot from Moscow to Krasnodar is an indication that their could be traffic there.

Being theoretically in range of ATR does not mean ATR will fly there. It is simply not an ATR type of route. It requires at least a regional jet, in the absence of which JU will deploy A319. A move that will definitely ruin another day in the life of Anon 9:50.

If you had any clue about the aviation business you would have figured out that just because IST does not work does not mean another route could not work. Factors determining an airline success in IST and KRR are so fundamentally different, it is embarrassing to use the two in a same sentence. But it's something you still have to discover since your mission here is to insult certain countries rather than talking aviation.

It's interesting how people here, including JATBEGMEL have double standards and criteria - so not succeeding in IST is OK because some other airlines are withdrawing from there, yet opening Krasnodar is also OK, despite the fact that other airlines, much bigger and more appealing to passengers don't fly there and consider it zero posibility success market. Cheers!

No one said dropping IST was OK per se. It was clearly said that since JU failed to position itself there and attract customers, a better solution to the problem was to replace their own route with KK codeshare than to keep flying empty.

Dropping one route is not comparable to starting another one, so please stop accusing other posters of something they did not say.

Well JU will have to start something new. With the current planned timetable they will have a lot of planes with long hours doing nothing so I was expecting that they will be starting up some new flights.

If this is true then I think it will be a great strategic decision. This is definitely a move that can be labelled as thinking outside the box.

Krasnodar is a growing city with some 745.000 inhabitants. It's population is continuously growing which can only mean that there is some economic activity which in its own turn creates a travelling public.

Their airport handled 3.128.248 passengers in 2015, meaning that it handled more passengers than any ex-YU airport with the exception of BEG. I also checked their website and seems like several airlines are adding frequencies and destinations.

Mind you, Austrian Airlines operates these flights with a mix of F70 and E95. Air Serbia's A319 would provide a far superior experience, not to mention that the flight would be shorter than OS' which is almost three hours from what I remember.

Finally, don't forget that Russians don't require a visa to enter Serbia so they could organize tourist groups like they do from Turkey and Israel.

My prediction is that we will see a similar schedule like the one to LCA.

Thank you Nemjee. As some of you know, I've been advocating this route for years. KRR is the gateway to the South, Caucasus and Crimea which has no international services so KHE and KRR are becoming its 'main' airports for international travel. KRR is also an alternative to Rostov. This would be the first of a kind of 'odd' routes materializing. Better late than never.

Just checked that OS do fly 6 flights p.w VIE-KRR while PC do daily KRR-SAW. There is no other major foreign, European airline so I am thinking that JU took a very good decision.KRR has more traffic, compared to say, ZAG so there will definitely be potential on that route.Maybe VAR or KBP didn´t work out well but hey KRR might prove to be the next gem.Pozdrav ot Sofia.

JU has 10 airbuses and only 4 or 5 of those are used for the night departure wave (ATH, SKG, LCA, TLV, BEY). That leaves 5-6 for trying and testing the market. Its better to try currently undeserved destinations in the east (up to 3 hours away) than to leave them sitting idle all night long. It is not like they were throwing darts at the map. Planes are moved where they can be used more profitably. Hence IST, BUD, WAW, KBP, cuts.

I agree more can be made from the night departure wave. ME departures do well during this wave and I would focus more on that.

However, as for the last sentence, JU simply needs a regional jet for markets like KBP and WAW. Its not a market for the ATR but too small for an A319. Budapest can be made by car in 4 hours and high fares didn't help stimulate O&D demand.

Going back to the night waves, I honestly think AMM would be a good addition.

They didn't submit a request to fly, they asked for the bilateral agreement between Serbia and Russia to include a 3rd city (in this case KRR) in order to broaden the range of cities available for BOTH designated carriers ie. Air Serbia AND Aeroflot. Aeroflot also agreed to this.

For me it is surprising decision. It seems that JU is looking for bit unexpected solutions (that might not be bad at all) but somehow it reminds me on VAR. At the time JU started flights there we had similar comments here of people who did not expect it but believed it might be good destination. Unfortunately JU was not successful there.From the other side these "exotic" destinations (Krasnodar, Almaty) somehow remind me on strategy Czech Airlines had in Russia but failed. I still believe that BCN could be better solution.

Yeah, BCN where everyone flies already would be much better than an underserved point that keeps growing in importance. Why trying something new if you can fight for crumbs in BCN against Europe's largest legacies and LCCs.

Not to mention that VAR does not compare to KRR. And even if it does, this logic: "If one destination failed then everything else will fail no matter what" is really beyond me.

@ Nemjee,what you are saying about Romania is totally incorrect. I know Romania very well. This is a country with which I'm working very closely in last years and can assure you that their relations with Russia are very bad. TAROM even have stopped flying to SVO due to poor loads...

If we follow that logic JU should not be flying to LHR, FRA, AMS, CDG etc as "everyone flies there already". We have experience that Spanair was very successful on that route (worked much better than MAD) and there is no reason JU not to be.

Vueling must have good reasons to keep that flight during summer (even this year until end of October) meaning there are enough passengers despite JU has different business model than Vueling.

VAR does not compare to KRR as KRR sounds really exotic at this moment while VAR is far more popular, but still not successful for JU.

Air Serbia had around 30 passengers per flight to Varna. My guess is that they were not losing money but they were not making much either.

I mean, how successful would DBV or SPU be for JU if there weren't all those O&D passengers? These summer airports get most of their traffic from charter and scheduled flights which sell their seats to tour operators.

Krasnodar on the other hand is a city with year-round demand. Their passenger growth is not dependent on foreign visitors coming to have a swim in their sea.

Don't forget that Russia and Serbia have extremely strong ties. This will play an important role as well. After all, wasn't there a survey recently which found out that roughly 40% of Serbs would support some sort of union with Russia.

In the end, the best solution would be to introduce both BCN and KRR. ;)

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